A Great Week!

We had a short week, but we learned a lot! Last week we finished our Thanksgiving cards that we started with our Grade 1 buddies. This week we made a gratitude tree together. Each of us decorated circles and wrote something we're thankful for inside each circle to go on the tree.

In Math we worked more with perimeter and area. In our problem, "36 Fences," we were given a perimeter of 36 metres and had to make a horse corral that would have the smallest and largest area. We drew miniature corrals and used pieces of q-tips to build them on giant grid paper. The shape with the largest area was a circle! The shape with the smallest area was irregular, which means it doesn't share all the attributes of a regular shape like a circle, rectangle, square or more. We also talked about how making a mistake, and even failing at something (like making a shape that doesn't work for the problem), is actually great because it means we're learning!

We also started a clay project with a professional artist named Donna. She showed us some clay creations and explained how clay is porous, which means it soaks up water like a sponge. When we make our own clay pieces we will paint them with glaze and the clay will soak it up! We are going to make texture paintings using clay and glaze of wild animals to connect to our study of habitats and communities in Science. We planned our pieces on paper during this session and cut out pieces like a sewing pattern, except we won't be sewing! Next time we will trace the paper pattern onto our clay and cut our pieces to make our animals. We will paint the clay with glaze (special clay paint) the next day. Donna will take the art to fire (heat up) in the kiln and the glaze will become shiny like glass!

Choice time was fun and amazing. We didn't have choice time last week because we saved up an hour of choice time to use today! We played inside and outside and had a great time with our friends! Looking forward to more fun and learning next week!